Concussion Can Lead to Permanent Hearing Impairment

Concussion, with a hard blow to the head everyone can live mostly professional athletes and soldiers it happens. Known symptoms of concussion, which can have serious consequences if left untreated headache, dizziness, nausea, and confusion is located. But researchers have found that concussions can also may cause permanent hearing impairment. discovered.

Stating that our brain makes a great effort to perceive the sounds in the outside world, neuroscience professor Nina Krausof concussions, 15-20% of them cause long-term hearing problems. it states. Kraus explains that the signal coming from both ears is processed in the brain in order to understand the source of any sound; He states that features such as volume, tone and timing should be distinguishable. However, concussions have been observed to prevent the brain from distinguishing these features of sound to a large extent.

The effects of a concussion can last for ten years:

Kraus’ lab ‘Brainvolts’ has been conducting a five-year study to understand how concussion affects hearing. 500 athletes tested within the scope of this research, in quiet environments They were able to distinguish different sounds. But athletes the rising voices when they try to distinguish speech sounds between they failed the test. “The researchersnoise-embedded-speech audioIn this test, which they called “i”, individuals with normal brain functions could easily distinguish sounds. Emphasizing the importance of these experiments to test brain health, Kraus states that most athletes recover from a concussion within a few weeks.

Concussions experienced by soldiers on battlefields may be more permanent. It is stated that many young American soldiers who served in bomb-exploded areas during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have hearing complaints. Soldiers being examined no ear problems, but the exploding bombs appeared to cause concussions. Soldiers with hearing complaints could not distinguish speech sounds from ambient sounds, and could not make sense of words when spoken quickly. In some soldiers, hearing problems caused by the concussion they experienced on the battlefield persists even after ten years seen. Kraus continues to work to expand treatment avenues in this area, along with new research.